Harvard's Ambition

"Harvard," says the headline, "aims for return to football glory." That is to say, Harvard is going to recruit athletes and, as the story explains, will lure them with offers of scholarships, jobs, and loans.

Harvard has had a succession of feeble football teams. The record book shows eight defeats and only one victory last fall. Mr. Hutchins faced with a similar situation, pulled the University of Chicago out of the league. Harvard, which usually follows Chicago's educational innovations with a lag of about ten years, has chosen in this matter to follow Louisiana State.

The outcome will be awaited with interest. We have a hunch the plan won't work. Harvard, like the University of Chicago, has the reputation--deserved or undeserved--of being a hard school to stay in. The young men who are looking forward to careers in the professional football league will prefer to take their talents where their education in football is not likely to be cut short.

The solid men of Boston have solid fortunes to be tapped, but so have the solid men of Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama who have fewer academic traditions to restrain them. Besides, to get a boy to go to one of the football colleges of the south and southwest you have to compensate him for the education he isn't going to get. We doubt that Harvard has the stomach to meet this kind of competition. From the Chicago Daily Tribune, March 1, 1950